“The call of the patriots of Trieste and Trent must find an echo in the hearts of all Italians, and the yoke of Austria, no better than that of the Turk, must once for all be broken from off the necks of our brethren.”
Forty years were to pass before Garibaldi’s words were realized.
On this, his last visit to Rome, Garibaldi once more urged the Romans to make a supreme effort to banish the fever from their city by building the Tiber Embankment and thus preventing the river from rising and overflowing its banks. The Romans did for Garibaldi what they would not have done for any other man, and put through that splendid piece of engineering. Though to-day his statue rides in bronze on the Janiculum, Rome’s greatest monument to him remains the Tiber Embankment. To-day we recognize that he, the man of vision, saw the future truer than Crispi the statesman; it was not so in 1878, when the young King Umberto took the oath of office. Crispi, his trusted advisor, had fallen under the sway of the Iron Chancellor, and from that time stood for the Triple Alliance and German influence. Italy endured a great disappointment this year at the Congress of Berlin, from which the Italian envoy, Count Corti, returned to Rome empty handed, when by skillful diplomacy his country might easily have gained some substantial increase of territory. I remember Count Corti in the United States, when he was the Italian Minister. He was an insignificant looking man, with a very small nose, which may have had something to do with his failure! I recall a story of a heated argument between Count Corti and Vicenzo Botta, an Italian exile formerly a monk now married to an American wife. Botta spoke with great heat, pouring out a flood of invective against the church, the Pope, and the clerical party. Count Corti, a moderate man, with moderate ideas and gifts, waited for a pause in the fiery diatribe and then said with biting irony:
“And I was a Dominican Friar!”
The host changed color, hesitated, and dropped the argument!
King Victor was hardly cold when the German infiltration of Italy showed a marked increase, that quiet thorough system of penetration, which was to make Capri, Olevano, and certain other garden spots of Italy seem like German colonies. In the spring of 1879, the birthday of one of the royalties was celebrated by tableaux vivants at the German Embassy, the Palazzo Cafferelli on the Capitoline Hill.
“It makes me shudder to think that the Germans have gained a footing on the sacred soil of the Capitol!” a young American student said to me, as we climbed the long steps leading to the summit.
The tableaux were the important social event of that season, and I was pleased enough when asked to take part. A prize was offered by the German Ambassador for the best tableau, and the competition among the artists was intense. Each painter made a sketch of his subject and then proceeded to find the victims to illustrate it. I have forgotten the name of my artist, an energetic fellow who gave me my first ideas of German efficiency. His picture represented a scene in the studio of Phidias, when the sculptor shows his statue of Minerva to Pericles and Aspasia; from the hour the part of Aspasia was assigned to me, I was pursued by that artist, who insisted upon examining every minutest detail of my costume. A sketch of the dress was given me, and having followed it, as I thought, closely enough, I presented myself at the first rehearsal. My artist was far from satisfied:
“It is not enough to indicate the Greek border on the underdress,” he declared; “it must be carefully embroidered in gold. The hair has not been properly studied; the ornaments are three centuries late in style. The mantle is not the right color; it must be blue to harmonize with the slave’s drapery.”
The slave, Maud Broadwood, later Mrs. Waldo Story, a handsome dark girl, who was to sit at my feet, seemed discontented with her part. Used to the rough-and-ready American manner of getting up tableaux, I innocently exclaimed: